It looks like Brink is having a free weekend!, so you might as well grab it and see what the fuss (or lack thereof) is about. I’ve put the RPS servers online, you can search for them in-game by searching for “Rock”. There’s a US server in Chicago and a UK one on London. I’ll post some events on the Steam group to get this rolling.

They do. There are decent-sized atriums with 3 or 4 levels to them and plenty of little shortcuts to encourage players to take alternative routes/change tactics. Examples are reaching the MG nests (at least one in each atrium) from the killing floor and a shortcut through a hedge at the start of the “Founder’s tower” map.

I’ve found it to be a very slick and quite pretty Enemy Territory game, continuing to refine what they did with Wolfenstein:ET (which I loved) and Quake Wars:ET (which was also good and had vehicles but never bought because I was too busy and it seemed player-starved).

Problem is I just don’t think it’s £15 worth of longevity fun, especially given the playerbase is starved out by other multiplayer juggernauts and, frankly, this kind of game does not tolerate random public server idiots well.

This is the ONLY place on the internet I’ve seen where people admit to liking it. At every other forum I’ve looked, it’s full of people saying that it’s so terrible that you shouldn’t even bother downloading the trial.

What do you expect from eleventeen year olds who have entitlement issues ;)

I think what most people did was raise their expectations stupidly high as to what Brink would exactly be. The company is also to blame for this with their marketing videos/trailers. In the videos it shows most players a completely different style of game… With opportunity.

Lack of single player campaign.
Bots never work to help you…
Lack of guns (they handle relatively all the same)
Voip didn’t work at launch… And it’s a hassle to set up fireteams
Issues with performance – ATI users

Those are a few examples, but generally I think the game was showed to people and hyped up so much to be completely different than what we got. Great concept, but failed to execute.

I am mostly a huge fan of the styling and artwork/level design in this game so that’s why I play. The post processing and color styling is a refreshing visual

When you get a great team that works together and uses Voip, the game is soooo much better and more fun. Again, you’ll see a lot of haters are trying to be the lone-wolf Rambo and it just doesn’t work in this game!

Lack of guns is a design mis-step. Go to Challenges and play them. They’re quite fun and actually give you some toys which aren’t just variations on the theme of SMG and AR.

Yahtzee is probably right that having to unlock class distinctions beyond what you have to point at and hold use is Quite Dumb, but the challenges are good tutorial roughage that’s more interesting than “Ok, now turn your camera to the left…good boy, have a biscuit!”

Bots could really do with defending players (usually you) completing objectives better. The security mission where you have to crack a safe and carry a codekey is annoying because you’re vulnerable for the former without them covering you (which they’re bad at) and the key gets dropped and returned easily if you die in the latter (where you will likely be almost solo against the enemy time while the bots muck about being distracted by command posts).

The game is quite pleasant to play, in my opinion.
The only thing disturbing me is with the beginning of some maps, which can easily turn into a spawn camp fest if the attacking team doesn’t make its move fast enough. (container city and the prison, typically).

Bots are quite ok, in my opinion. They may not cover you ideally sometimes, but they are in general doing their job. And to be honest, they are most of the time the best medics you will find in public games.
The only thing which really annoys me is the automatic skill change trigger which occurs 1 minute before the end. 1 minute before the end of the countdown, the attacking team takes 3-4 skill levels up, and opposite for the defenders (according to the traces in console, at least). So it’s a bit frustrating to suddenly see the opposite team kill you in two bullets and your team changing into a bunch of idiots…

But aside from that, the core game is quite nice. I spent nice hours on it.

It is odd that someone would claim that the people frustrated over Brink are teenagers with entitlement problems. I think there are several real issues present. The principal one is how broken and buggy the game was on release. Most of the problems were with ATI cards, but I have an NVIDIA Geforce 470 card and I was getting CTDs due to an OpenGL error for a full month…did you read that…a FULL MONTH before it was patched. Some people are still having hardware-related issues. No wonder the game is so sparsely populated at this point: a multiplayer only game where a substantial portion of the purchasers could not play for weeks or even a month after release. When I finally could play the servers were mostly empty and I discovered a game that was dramatically different from the marketing, previews, and related news.

Here is the key portion of the comment thread:

>>>>>>>The company is also to blame for this with their marketing videos/trailers. In the videos it shows most players a completely different style of game… >>>>>>

Most of the trailers showed extensive verticality, bombastic parkour moves, speedy running, and wide open levels. The developers continually hyped up the freedom of movement and the SMART system, and all the alternative routes through levels.

The reality I discovered is that the levels were tighter than a Call of Duty corridor, most matches devolved into a clusterfuck/battle-of-attrition in a tiny room/corridor with minimal movement, and the SMART system basically allowed me to hop over boring piles of debris and climb ledges that my Grandmother wouldn’t have too much trouble with. I know that there is always a disconnect between marketing and reality, but this one was a huge gap and I realize the blame falls squarely on my shoulders. I pre-ordered this game and really believed in it and even dismissed the naysayers and patiently waited for my CTD problem to be patched out. I thought this was going to be my FPS of the year and dominate my time like Bad Company 2 did last year. I was so enthusiastic, but hindsight proves me to be a fool.

This game went from being a dominant presence in my game-related sphere of attention to becoming a cautionary tale about pre-orders and a reality check regarding critical scrutiny of developer’s claims. Brink now has the title of being the game that prevents me from ever pre-ordering any game ever again. I suppose you can just dismiss me as a privileged pre-pubescent teen.

I don’t want this game to fail and I wish nothing but positive things for the developers even though I will probably never purchase one of their games again, but no ill will on my behalf. This pre-order was a mistake and it was my mistake. I should have been more careful and diligent, but I do think that the complainers have some solid claims backed by much more evidence than the typical angry internet crowd.

@Sigh – I remember reading that about the “corridor” battles before owning the game (mostly from Jim Sterling), but honestly, aside from the two beginnings I talked about, I haven’t noticed that.

There are always alternative routes to the objectives, and ways to go around. But it is true that most people in public servers will mass on the main way and not think about going somewhere else.

Personally, I’m having a blast with my Light character, disorientating others, jumping around, and killing people from places they weren’t expecting. So to me it’s not really a simple gimmick. But hey, that’s just how I play.

Brink is all about choke-points. If your team is bogged down in one spot, there is always another route, although it may require some creative parkour. A good team has the heavy body types putting pressure on the bottlenecks, while the light body types capture secondary objectives and mess up the enemies from behind.
That said, do not join a server if they are on the “Resort” map. Security has an overwhelming advantage if they get entrenched after a couple minutes. This can definitely be overcome, but you will need some skilled team-mates.

“Ok bots, I’ll do it myself. Cover me.”
“What’s that? A buildable or command post on the other side of the map is available? LET’S ALL RUN OFF OVER THERE!”
“ararghghl *ded* Meeeedic!”
“Nope sorry too busy supporting the team capturing command posts! *awesomeface*”

Repeat until failed. The enemy can easily spare a man to blow up/recapture stuff because they’ve got a horrendous terrain advantage and it only takes one of them to make all the damn security bots distracted.

I can’t beat this blasted thing on easy because this just isn’t the kind of game where you can solo crowds effectively, given if one gets away for a few seconds they’ll regenerate all their health, and it only takes one medic to bring the whole crowd back because there’s just not time to batter them all in their faces.

And then I got some very exciting distorted-polygons-and-text graphics corruption after the fourth attempt, presumably because the game was getting as bored as I was and wanted to liven things up a bit.

@Lionsphil: If you are doing the tutorials, the enemy bots get harder as you level up, so if you really want to beat it, start a new lvl 1 character. Weapons (not abilities) are unlocked for every character, so you won’t lose all your progress.

Really the easiest way to succeed is to find a server with some humans.

>>>>>>>There are always alternative routes to the objectives, and ways to go around. But it is true that most people in public servers will mass on the main way and not think about going somewhere else.>>>>>>>>>

Perhaps ONE or TWO, I suppose? You know what that is the case with nearly every shooter on the market. Even Call of Duty offers interesting ways to flank the enemy team and typically has at least two routes to a capture point. I thought Brink was going to really open up the levels and have many multiples of routes to a capture point, have substantial verticality, and significant opportunities for parkour-based flanking. Unfortunately, most of the levels offered one dominant path to an objective with possibly a single alternative route and most of it was inside and in corridors. It was quite a disappointment.

I mean my God, Bad Company 2 offered more interesting movement and travel opportunities and had significantly more verticality than Brink. And most of BC2’s maps are principally outside in varied environments.

I am sorry I guess that I am missing something and cannot allow myself to perceive something that 300-500 (and declining) people have. Perhaps my expectations were too high. The movement was somewhat interesting but did not set the bar high enough or differentiate itself from current shooters that already have acceptable movement patterns.

I am glad that many of you were able to find a diamond in the rough and enjoy the game, I wish my response was more aligned with the positive comments here, but it is not.

True, but I don’t think that should deter anyone interested. The player numbers may only be around 400-500, but that doesn’t mean that all these people are in different servers. I’ve played a couple times since the announcement of a release date for the DLC and not had any issue joining a full server and some really good games.
Look forward to playing with you guys.

I get a bit of stutter on my 6950. It’s still playable, but not really what I would expect from this card. This is with everything besides Ambient Occlusion on, which drops it down to a barely playable level (sorry, don’t know actual numbers.)

The game has a 30 FPS cap, but only in single-player (one more reason the single-player is pretty much trash). If you’re having terrible performance in single-player, please try playing online and see if the situation is improved.

Hells yeah, looking forward to this. By the way, does anyone know if the RPS servers are friendly fire enabled? I must shamefully admit that I can be awful with friendly fire so apologies in advance if I accidentally wipe out my entire team whilst panicking about operatives.

I keep shooting friendly bots in the head because, stupidly, one of the Security dress-up options is a red balaclava-type thing.

It gets very confusing as rebels, too, as the outline highlights for someone you’re selecting, and gentle glow it seems to put on people at times, is coded blue-friendly, red-hostile. So if you’re playing as the mostly-red team, it highlights people backwards. Awuhgarblebluhd.

Yeah, Freeplay > Search is the way to access multiplayer (you can also open up campaign games and challenges to outside players, but I suspect you’ll not find many takers). If no servers are showing up then I suspect you might be having connectivity issues.

Raziel_Alex: Once you’ve started the search you can open up the filters tab at the top. The first option is the server name filter, though, as ColOfNature observed, the RPS servers don’t appear to be up at the present time .

1 – it needs a decent PC, my machine plays Dirt3, Portal2 and Bulletstorm AOK but this has a patchy framerate and transitions between stuff in a pretty lumpy fashion.

2 – it’s far, far too complicated to try to grasp at 2am – I might try when my brain is in a slightly less tired state but it still struck me it was trying far, far, far too hard…

I also despise games which expect me to learn them in 1 big video – give me a few ‘tutorial’ levels to walk me through the controls, concepts and how stuff works in general, don’t just lecture me and expect me to figure everything else out myself eh??

Unlike console players (that this is clearly aimed at) we can’t just “press every button to see what it does” as we have LOTS more to choose from…

I’m guessing the performance is better described as “unpredictable”, since I have an old GeForce 8-series machine and it runs beautifully on Ultra settings here. Which is weird, considering it’s id tech.Edit: Oops, my mistake—on medium, which was pretty enough to get me crosswired with the Starcraft demo earlier and make me think it was Ultra.

My PC is an AMD245 w/3GB RAM (W7-64) but I suspect the problem is my ATi (5670) GPU.

It runs at ABOUT the sort of FPS I’d expect (25-30) – mostly – but it dips and stutters like a mad thing from time to time – and the game, which is sold (in the ads) as this fast-moving shooter, feels like running in porridge…

It’s just a massive headf*ck from the start tho – so much going on, a HUD which contains a tonne of info and – to be quite frank I cannot be bothered with it (and that’s before the issue of forming any sort of teamwork crops up).

I’ve no idea if the team manshoot market likes stuff like this – but an hour with it felt more like a job – MUCH more than any MMO ever felt like that…

I figured that but I’m thinking about the bots/other team members and all the other crap you need to consider.

I started playing BFBC2 off-the-back of a video someone did which is shorter than the ‘starter’ video in this and yet when I got into the game I knew how to be useful and what we were doing.

Here – I had no idea at all.

End of the day, it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to buy and play a game which runs like shit on my PC – but I can’t imagine the degree of horror that console owners must have had, paying £40 for this shit.

the only thing bothering me about brink right now is this… prepare for wall of text but i need to get it off my chest:

i was one of the many fans of SDs previous games (all two of them) who bought brink at release for full price – it’s been unfinished, buggy, annoying and really lacking in content for months although the patches have helped quite a bit and i do enjoy the game a lot.

now that it’s patched to a more ‘finished’ level of quality, (the way it should have been at release?) they’ve now added two free maps, some more abilities AND dropped the price by 50%?!? what the hell?
so the early birds pay full price for almost 3 months of playing an unfinished beta version and the guys who came late to the party swoop in and pick it up for peanuts with a lot of the major bugs already fixed and no headaches!

i know games go down in price over time and there are great value GOTY versions for example, but its been out 10 weeks!

this is sd/bethesda realising they never should have released the game under the pretense of having a ‘single player campaign’ at full price — right from the off it should’ve been a budget-priced download-only, multiplayer-only game kicked of with a free weekend to get people into it.

just annoyed that’s all – my internet connections fucked this week, happened the day before the dlc came out so i’m stuck on 15kbps till the ip profile raises – that might have something to do with my feelings too hehe.

It is harsh, but you can forgive them for trying to entice some new players and the cheapskates who hang on for sales. Surely it’s no bad thing if the community receives a shot in the arm and the game fills up considering they were barely making 600 concurrent players on Steam at any given time a week ago.

it’ll be interesting to see how many people are still playing this time next week. 250’000 bought brink at release and only about 700 odd were playing on pc up to now. its 10x that at the moment due to the free weekend but after that….

Having played Brink for couple of weeks when it was released and now going back to the servers reveals me one thing: most players are absolutely clueless as to what to do and you can quite comfortably dodge their feeble attempts to shoot at you while parkouring around them. Or alternatively shoot them before they realize you even were there. The few servers I joined had around 2-3 players who knew what they were doing and the rest were pretty much headless chickens. I’m not sure how many people are actually willing to learn the game but trust me, the first few hours are not the real Brink experience. Learning the maps is absolutely vital to survival and getting to objectives. And to actually enjoy this game. Rushing again and again to that same choke point is not how this game is played.

Oh and your grenades are not Call of Duty grenades, nor are they Bad Company 2 grenades. They are however quite useful support tools.

Is after 7pm, announcement has gone out, and there is currently a clamour in the RPS Steam chat room to find the server. No one can see it in the Server list, if it is indeed UP. If we knew the address we could maybe try and direct connect.

I’ll try to give Brink a spin again this weekend, but I had it on pre-order and found it to be huge disappointment. The selection of weapons was poorly balanced and saw most people resorting to the same SMGs. The bodytypes were likewise poorly balanced, making the heavy feel rather redundant, and the inability to switch bodytypes during a round is asinine. It also features what I think are the worst, most unsatisying grenades in FPS history.

The core gameplay is sound enough, but all that I could think was that I’d rather be playing ET or ET:QW. Or any class based team shooter tbh.

What was supposed to be the hook for Brink was the SMART system, but I don’t think they ever took it far enough. Its only combat application is the firing floor slide, which is hardly original. Aside from that, it was just a means of getting from places to place in stifling chokepoint friendly maps.

What I think they should have done is exaggerated everything. The movement speeds and charateristics of the bodytypes for starters – then letting people fire pistols or SMGs while sprinting or using SMART movement, albeit with greatly reduced accuracy and damage from what it is now. And then balancing that with more accurate assault rifles and more powerful weapons for heavy players.

With more open maps and a more faster, agile light players, it could have created a more fast-paced shooter that carved its own niche. As it stands, it’s ok but I can’t see any compelling reason to play it over Splash Damage’s previous (superior) games.

SMART, and the game in general, remains ever clunky, but they did at least get around to re-balancing the weapons a month or so back. The previously ubiquitous CARB-9, which packed assault rifle punch into an SMG frame, has been significantly toned down and, better yet, the heavy weapons now actually provide adequate compensation for those lumbering around as a ‘Heavy’.

I have to admit I was never super excited about Brink, just due to the nature of it and the sort of FPS I like (TF2, Serious Sam, Quake Live), but I’m willing to give it a go because I do think it is a game that deserves to do well in many ways. Unfortunately my experience has not been all that positive so far.

I find the control layout a little weird and not especially intuitive – I spend a lot of time hunting around for the right hotkey – but I can deal with that. The objective system is interesting, but feels very cluttered – like most of the HuD is really just a crutch that they felt pressured to add in hope of guiding people to play “right” – as opposed to trusting them to figure out how to revive close teammates or to escort allies.

The maps are good for the most part, but are very hard to understand as a new player – I feel like I need to spend a few hours just running around learning the map’s idiosyncrasies, and there are constantly times when an objective seems to be impossible to get to – every turn I take seems to be a dead end.

The worst thing by far though, is the feel of the movement. I don’t feel like I have control of my character at all, it just feels like I’m sort of pointing a guy at random obstacles and hoping he’ll climb or jump over them. Or other times I’m just trying to sprint and I get hung up on some random piece of wall or railing. Also They just throw this huge pile of undifferentiated ARs and SMGs at me, and I have no clue which one to take or what their various benefits and drawbacks are – and the gunplay only feels slightly better than the movement. It’s a very sloppy new player experience.

On the other hand, I love the visual style, the design of the team-based play (if not the GUI that supports it), and the story and setting. It’s a very fresh scenario and the maps just ooze character and style.

I’ll give it a few more tries as the weekend continues, but I just can’t see myself being convinced to actually drop money on it. Maybe it’ll grab me once I get my head around the controls, I dunno.

Played it for half a dozen hours or so. Impressions:
– Required me to download three ATI drivers and reboot twice until I finally got a version running that didn’t freeze for a second every three seconds.

– Played a few rounds with bots, so I don’t embarrass myself online. Worked decently, until I figured out that the bots have very bad spatial awareness and really hate some objectives. They hate them so much in fact that they will not bother guarding me while I do them.

– Also, the bots cheat brutally. Whenever a level nears the end, the attacking bots suddenly start shooting twice as precise as up to that point and their reactions improve to programer league, while the defending bots start smoking weed. I’ve seen single attack bots overrun four to six defending bots including a medic or two.

– Forced me to do tutorial levels to unlock guns. Seriously, I don’t want a tutorial, I’m a seasoned gamer. I can figure out that I need to press F at objectives without getting told so. Brink isn’t really complex, just chaotic. Instead of a simple mechanic with a lot of meaningful interactions (the TF2 cart) we get complex mechanics with all too simple interactions (use button on anything, but you need to play the right class to begin with). It’s bad game design, really.

– Weapons feel identical. I have a hard time distinguishing them visually, especially with all the frills you can stick on them, and they all do about the same amount of damage and feel very, very similar. It’s also annoyingly complex to change or switch them, which means you cannot really experiment easily. Loadout slots like Tribes would help.

– SMART is neat. Really. Most levels do not really require it though.

– Fucking Ironsight/Camping game. We get a great movement system, but then hitscan guns which improve accuracy by a ton when you camp and zoom (why!? I understand that the console plebs need a way to change aiming sensitivity, but I don’t!), but spraying bullets widely while running? Standing still is such a huge advantage, I don’t want to use SMART at all. TF2 doesn’t bother with that, and it’s far more movement-based because of it, despite having slower walk speed on many classes and no SMART.

– Moving my viewport during firing? I dislike it, but oh well. But then moving it back when you stop shooting? Which means I am now looking at the floor, because I did actually compensate with my mouse? That’s just so wrong! It makes sense for 360-pads, but not for mouses.

– The plot. Everyone is DEAD FUCKING SERIOUS all the time, but what happens on the screen is about as realistic as TF2 (“Revive yourself!”, “Aw damn, this match is lost in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”). The “rebels” are bombing the ark which they live on? WHY?! They don’t have a motive! Nothing makes sense!

Short version: Too much CoD cloning, bad port, technical issues. Could have been a good game, but didn’t try hard enough to be unique, and it’s now okay, but unimpressive. Suggested price point: Cheaper than Section 8.